Home > Consumer Reviews > Lensbaby Wide Angle Telephoto Kit

I consider the 3G lensbaby a decent value for money (a little on the high side pricewise, at three times the cost of the original, but a fun and occasionally useful lens to play around with nonetheless).

The wide-angle and tele extenders, on the other hand, are fairly useless, and way overpriced for what you get. The widest shot you can get isn't very wide at all, and tele doesn't bring your subject appreciably closer. I expected more -- not 12 mm or 200 mm, but not this marginal, optically compromised performance either.

Can't speak to the usefulness on non-full-frame cameras, however on a 5D Mark II, the value is limited at best. The wide and tele adapters will show up if you tilt the composer lens at all. So, it's probably not great for full-frame cameras, but may work for non-full-frame.

What are you looking for? That is what you have to ask about this product. You pay for lenses. Don't ever think that you are going to get high quality with a low priced lens. There are just some things in life you have to pay for. That said, the LensBabies 3G for the Nikon mount is in a word,"Great", or maybe it is just,"Fun". It is not a "Nikon" lens and doesn't portend to be. Use it for all those fun and creative snaps as you see on their website. You will be like a kid with a hammer with this product; everything is a nail.

I have the new Nikon D300 and maybe I need to review this product as well, but we won't here. Let me just say that it is the prefect camera for the LensBabies with its LiveView capabilities. You will find that using this product in the manual mode is the best choice as it is easy to see if you have the correct exposure. Even popping up the flash works well in this mode. I haven't tried a separate flash yet, but I'm sure it won't take much to get it to work well. (Thank God for the digital after all those years of not knowing if you got the photo, especially at weddings.)

I also have the D80 Nikon and it works just as well on it as the D300, so I'm sure that any of the digital Nikons will work fine.

When you get the LensBabies 3G, it will help you to just go to their website and review how to use this product. Or you could just wait until you break it and then read the instructions. The hardest part of using the Lensbabies is getting in the habit of adjusting the focus and locking it down. It will take some getting use to and knowing where the controls are. It took me about a two dozen snaps before I instinctively "knew" the feel of the controls. You may get the jump on me with this, but as with anything new, learn it well before committing to a wedding or portrait session.

Or maybe you'll use it for "fun" projects. I certainly look forward to using it more. Ummmm, I wonder if I really should tell people about this new lens. Maybe I want to keep this info to myself. I'll have to think about that. I'll let you know.

Got the lensbaby as a gift for my Nikon D200 setup. What a blast! Once you get used to the manual changing of focus and experiment with the possibilities (digital is great..No film to waste), you can get really creative.